THE BERKELEYS
AND THEIR NEIGHBORS

BY

MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

AUTHOR OF THROCKMORTON, MAID MARIAN, LITTLE JARVIS,
MIDSHIPMAN PAULDING, ETC.

REVISED EDITION

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1892

Copyright, 1888,
By M. ELLIOT SEAWELL.
Copyright, 1892,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed at the
Appleton Press, U. S. A.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THROCKMORTON. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“The incidents are of great interest, well-imagined, and admirably carried out. But the notable feature of the book is the rare charm of its literary expression. The language is full of grace and wit and delicate sensibility. To read is to be beguiled.”—New York Sun.

“The pages of ‘Throckmorton’ are alive with picturesque sketches. Its humor is never forced, and its pathos is never overdone. It is a novel to linger over.”—The Critic.

“A charming story. The author has used good English, and the reader yields to the fascination of her style.”—The Book Buyer.

MAID MARIAN, and other Stories. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“There is an unmistakable cleverness in this collection of short stories.”—Boston Literary World.

“Miss Seawell has a brisk and prolific fancy, and a turn for the odd and fantastic, while she is Past Master in the use of negro dialect and the production of tales of plantation life and manners. All these stories are spirited, well marked by local color, and written with skill and ingenuity.”—New York Tribune.

MIDSHIPMAN PAULDING. A true story of the War of 1812. With Six full-page Illustrations. 8vo. Bound in blue cloth, with special design in gold and colors. $1.00.

“The story is told in a breezy, pleasant style that can not fail to capture the fancy of young readers, and imparts much historical knowledge at the same time, while the illustrations will help the understanding of the events described. It is an excellent book for boys, and even the girls will be interested in it.”—Brooklyn Standard-Union.

LITTLE JARVIS. The story of the heroic midshipman of the frigate “Constellation.” With Six full-page Illustrations. 8vo. Bound uniformly with “Midshipman Paulding.” $1.00.

“Not since Dr. Edward Everett Hale’s classic, ‘The Man without a Country,’ has there been published a more stirring lesson in patriotism.”—Boston Beacon.

“It is what a boy would call ‘a real boy’s book.’”—Charleston News and Courier.

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York.

THE BERKELEYS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS.

CHAPTER I.

A provincial Virginia race-course is an excellent place to observe a people which has preserved its distinctiveness as well as the Virginians. So far, they have escaped that general and fatiguing likeness which prevails in most of the universe these days.

Therefore, the Campdown race-course, on a golden day in October, looked like itself and nothing else. The track had started out with the intention of making a perfect ellipse, but meeting a steep incline, it saved the trouble of bringing up the grade, by boldly avoiding the obstacle—so the winning post was considerably nearer the half-mile than the starting post was. Nobody objected to a little thing like this, though. The Virginians are good-natured creatures, and seldom bother about trifles.

It was the fall meeting of the Campdown Jockey Club—a famous institution “befo’ the war.”

At this time the great awakening had not come—the war was not long over. For these people, had they but known it, the end of the war really meant the end of the world—but the change was too stupendous for any human mind to grasp all at once. There came a period of shock before the pain was felt, when the people, groping amid the ruins of their social fabric, patched it up a little here and a little there. They resumed in a dazed and incomplete way their old amusements, their old habits and ways of life. They mortgaged their lands—all that was left to them—with great coolness and a superstitious faith in the future—Virginians are prone to hanker after mortgages—and spent the money untroubled by any reflections where any more was to come from when that was gone.

They were intense pleasure lovers. In that happy afternoon haze in which they had lived until the storm broke, pleasure was the chief end of man. So now, the whole county turned out to see two or three broken-down hacks, and a green colt or two, race for the mythical stakes. It is true, a green silk bag, embroidered in gold, with the legend “$300” hung aloft on a tall pole, for the sweepstakes, but it did not contain three hundred dollars, but about one-half of it in gold, and a check drawn by the president of the Jockey Club against the treasurer for the balance. Most of the members had not paid their dues, and the treasurer didn’t know where the money was to come from, nor the president either, for that matter; but it takes a good deal to discount a Virginian’s faith in the future. The public, too, was fully acquainted with the state of affairs, and the fact that there was any gold at all in the bag, would eventually be in the nature of a pleasant surprise.

The people, in carriages, or on horseback, bore little resemblance to the usual country gathering. They were gentlepeople tinged with rusticity. All of them had good, high sounding Anglo-Saxon names. There was some magnificence of an antique pattern. One huge family ark was drawn by four sleek old horses, with a venerable black coachman on the box, and inside a superb old lady with a black veil falling over her white hair. There were but two really correct equipages in the field. One was a trim, chocolate-colored victoria, with brown horses and a chocolate-colored coachman to match. In it sat a showy woman, with a profusion of dazzling blonde hair, and beside her was an immaculately well dressed blonde man. The turnout looked like a finely finished photograph among a lot of dingy old family portraits.

The other carriage that would have passed muster was a large and handsome landau, respectfully called “the Isleham carriage,” and in it sat Colonel Berkeley and his daughter Olivia. The Colonel was a genuine Virginia colonel, and claimed to be the last man in the State to wear a ruffled shirt bosom. A billowy expanse of thread cambric ruffles rushed out of his waistcoat; his snow white hair was carefully combed down upon his coat collar. At the carriage door stood his double—an elderly negro as grizzled as his master, to whom he bore that curious resemblance that comes of fifty years association. This resemblance was very much increased when Colonel Berkeley’s back was turned, and in the privacy of the kitchen, Petrarch—or more commonly Pete—pished and pshawed and railed and swore in the colonel’s most inimitable manner. Each, too, possessed a type of aggressive piety, which in Colonel Berkeley took the form of a loud declaration that a gentleman, in order to be a gentleman, must be a member of the Episcopal Church. This once accomplished, the Colonel was willing to allow liberally for the weaknesses of human nature, and considered too great strictness of behavior as “deuced ungentlemanlike, begad.” Petrarch regarded himself as a second Isaiah the prophet, and a vessel of election—having reached the stage of perfectibility—a usual thing in the experience of a genuine African. The Colonel described Petrarch as “that infernal rascally boy of mine,” and this “boy” was the one individual he had never been able to overawe or silence. Possibly an exception might be made to this in Miss Olivia, who sitting up, slim and straight and pretty, was treated by her father with elaborate old-fashioned courtesy. Colonel Berkeley was in a particularly happy and virtuous frame of mind on this day. This was his first appearance in public since his return from Europe, where a serious bodily injury had kept him during the whole four years of the war. He gloried in the consciousness that he was no renegade, but had returned to the sacred soil as soon as he possibly could, when he might have been enjoying himself elsewhere. When the Colonel said “the State of Virginia,” he really meant the whole planetary system. Nevertheless, two weeks in his beloved Virginia had bored him dreadfully, and he was “more orkarder,” as Petrarch expressed it, than any other two weeks of his whole life. The Campdown races he hailed as a godsend. He had a good competence left, in spite of having sent orders to his agents to convert lands, stocks, bonds, and everything, into Confederate securities—cotton bonds, Confederate gunboat stock, anything in which the State of Virginia was bound up. As far as in him lay, he had made ducks and drakes of a splendid fortune, from the finest and most disinterested motives that ever inspired a mistaken old gentleman, but fate had befriended him against his will. An investment at the North that the colonel had vainly tried to throw in the general wreck, had escaped confiscation, and had increased, a hundredfold in value. His orders to sell half of Isleham, his family place, for Confederate money, had arrived too late for his agent to carry it out. He had done the handsome thing, as it was esteemed, and after having practiced the strictest virtue, he was rewarded with all the pleasures that are commonly supposed to be the reward of vice.

“Don’t you think, papa,” the young girl said to him at once, “that we should go up on the grand stand? It might look a little—a little standoffish for us to remain here—and the county people—”

The Virginians inherit from their English ancestry, a vast and preposterous respect for their county people—and Miss Olivia Berkeley, fresh from Paris and London, was more anxious that no fault should be found with her by these out-of-the-way provincials than any of the fine people she had met during a considerable transatlantic experience. So was Colonel Berkeley—but there was a fly in his ointment.

“I would with pleasure, my love, but damme if those Hibbses are not sitting up on the stand along with their betters—and I won’t rub elbows with the Hibbses. It’s everywhere the same. Society is so infernally mixed now that I am always expecting to meet my tailor at dinner. I thought certainly, in old Virginia, the people would know how to keep the canaille in their places, and there, by George, sits a family like the Hibbses staring me in the face.”

“Yes,” replied Olivia, smiling. “It’s everywhere the same—you are bound to meet some of the Hibbses everywhere in the world—so we might as well do the right thing in spite of them. Petrarch, open the carriage door.”

The Colonel, with old-fashioned gallantry, assisted his daughter to alight, and giving her his arm, they crossed the track in full view of the grand stand, and went up the rickety wooden stairs at the end.

At no period in her life had Olivia Berkeley felt herself so thoroughly on exhibition as then. Her figure, her air—both of which were singularly graceful and refined—her gown which was Paris-made—all were minutely examined by hundreds of eyes that had not seen her since, as a pretty, half-grown girl, she went to church and paid visits under the charge of a demure governess. After they had crossed the white track, they were greeted by numerous gentlemen who sauntered back and forth about the quarter-stretch. Colonel Berkeley was elaborately gracious, and Olivia was by nature affable—to all except the Hibbses. But when they passed that inoffending family, the Colonel stalked on pointedly oblivious, and Olivia’s slight bow was not warming or cheering.

People moved up to shake hands with them—girls of Olivia’s age, soft voiced, matronly women, elderly men, a little shaky and broken, as all the old men looked after the war—and young men with something of the camp hanging to them still. Olivia was all grace, kindness, and tact. She had forgotten nobody.

Meanwhile Petrarch, who had followed them, managed to edge up to her and whisper:

“Miss ’Livy, ain’t dat ar Marse French Pembroke an’ he b’rer Miles? Look a-yander by de aige o’ de bench.”

Olivia glanced that way, and a slight wave of color swept over her face—and at that moment “Marse French’s b’rer Miles” turned his full face toward her.

He was a mere lad, of eighteen at the utmost. One side of his face, as she had first seen his profile, was of the purest Greek beauty. But on the other side, a shot had done dreadful work. One eye was drawn out of place. A horrid gash in the cheek remained, and one side of the mouth was painfully disfigured. On the same side, an arm was missing.

A torrent of pity almost overwhelmed Olivia as she looked at the boy—her little playmate in years gone by. And then the elder brother caught her eye, and bowed and smiled. He did not possess the beauty that had once belonged to Miles. He was dark and tanned, and his features had a manly irregularity. But he stood up straight and tall, and had the figure of a soldier. In a moment or two Olivia was shaking hands with Miles, looking straight and boldly into his face, as if there was nothing remarkable there. But just as she touched French Pembroke’s hand, the blonde woman in the victoria came within her line of vision.

Olivia threw up her head, and greeted Pembroke with a kind of chilling sweetness. But this all dissolved toward Miles.

“How delightful to see you again,” she said. “I suppose I shall have to say Mr. Miles now, although I never can think of you as anything but a dear little tormenting boy.”

The ghost of a smile—his smile was a mere contortion—came into Miles’ face—and while he talked, he thrust his one hand into his trousers pocket with a gesture of boyish shyness. Olivia thought she heard the tell-tale rattle of marbles in the pocket.

“I’ve—I’ve been a soldier since I saw you,” he said, with a boy’s mixture of pride and diffidence.

“So I hear,” answered Olivia, with a pretty air of severity, “ran away from school, I believe.”

“Yes,” said Miles, his diffidence disappearing before his pride. “I was big enough to carry a musket. Though I wasn’t but sixteen, I was taller than the captain of my company. Soldiering was fun until—until—.” He began to blush furiously, but kept on after a moment. “I didn’t mind sleeping in the mud, or anything. A man oughtn’t to mind that sort of thing, Olivia—if you’ll let me call you Olivia.”

“Of course I will,” replied Olivia gayly. “Do you think I want to appear any older than I am?” Then she turned to Pembroke and said, “I was sorry not to have seen you the day you came to Isleham. We met last in Paris.”

“I hope to see as much of Isleham as we did in the old days,” answered Pembroke. His voice was rather remarkable, it was so clear and well modulated.

“I hope,” began Miles, stammering a little, “that—that you and the Colonel understood my not—why I didn’t come to see you in Paris.”

“Not fully,” answered Olivia, pleasantly. “You must come over to Isleham and explain it—if you can. Have you seen papa yet?”

“I see him now,” said Pembroke with a smile, “shaking hands with Mrs. Peyton.”

Olivia smiled too. There had been a flirtation between Mrs. Peyton and Colonel Berkeley forty odd years before, and as everything that happened in the community was perfectly well known by everybody else, the episode had crystallized into a tradition. Colonel Berkeley had been known to swear that Sally Peyton in her youth was a jilt. Mrs. Peyton always said that Tom Berkeley was not to be depended on. The Colonel was saying to Mrs. Peyton in his grandest tones:

“Madam, Time has passed you by.”

“Ah, my dear Colonel,” responded Mrs. Peyton with a quizzical look at Colonel Berkeley’s elaborate toilet and flamboyant shirt ruffles, “we can’t cross the dead line of sixty without showing it. Even art cannot conceal it.”

“Just like Sally Peyton’s sharp tongue,” the colonel growled sotto voce—while a suppressed guffaw from Pete on the verge of the group, showed the remark was not lost on that factotum.

“And Petrarch too,” cried Mrs. Peyton in her fine, jovial old voice, holding out her hand.

Pete shuffled up and took her hand in his black paw.

“Howdy, Miss Sally. Lordy, marster done tole de truf—you looks jes ez young an’ chipper—How’s Mandy?”

“Mandy has lost her senses since old Abe Lincoln made you all free. She’s left me and gone to Richmond to go to school—the old idiot.”

“Hi! I allers did like Mandy, but I ain’t got no use fer dem niggers dat kin read ’n write. Readin’ an’ writin’ is fer white folks.”

“Shut up, you black rascal,” roared the Colonel, nevertheless highly delighted. “Madam, may I present my daughter—Olivia, my child.”

Olivia came up, and Mrs. Peyton kissed her affectionately, but not before a rapid glance which took in all there was of her.

“Like her sainted mother,” began the Colonel, dramatically.

“Not a bit,” briskly answered Mrs. Peyton. “A Berkeley all over, if ever I saw one. Child, I hope you are as nice as you are pretty.”

“Nobody ever told me I wasn’t nice,” responded Olivia with a smile.

“And not spoiled by your foreign travels?”

“Not in the least.”

Clang! Clang! Clang! goes the saddling bell.

“What do you think?” says Olivia laughing. “Papa has entered Dashaway. You know he is twelve years old, and as Petrarch says, he hasn’t any wind left—but papa wouldn’t listen to anybody.”

“Yes, that’s Tom Berkeley all over. Ah, my dear, I could tell you something that happened forty-two years ago, in which I promise you, I got the better of your father.”

The horses by this time are coming out. They are an ordinary looking lot except one spanking roan, the property of the despised Hibbses, and Dashaway, a gray thoroughbred, a good deal like Colonel Berkeley himself, but like him, with certain physical defects. The gray has a terrific wheeze, and the hair on his fetlocks is perfectly white. But he holds his head up gallantly, and gives a tremendous snort which nearly shakes the mite of a darkey off his back. All the jockeys are negro boys. There is no pool-selling, but the gentlemen make bets among themselves and with the ladies. The transactions if small, are exciting.

Colonel Berkeley’s presence hardly prevents a laugh as the gray ambles past the grand stand, snorting and blowing like a porpoise. The Colonel, however, has unshaken confidence in Dashaway. Is he not of the best blood of Sir Henry, and didn’t he win fourteen hundred dollars for the Colonel on the Campdown course the year before the war? Colonel Berkeley knows a horse well enough—but to know horses and to know one’s own horse are two things.

Colonel Berkeley, leaning over the fence, is giving his directions, in a loud voice, to the little darkey, who is nearly ashy with fright. He knows what is expected of him, and he knows Dashaway’s deficiencies.

“Now, sir, you are to make the running from the half-mile post. Keep well up with the horse in the lead, but don’t attempt to pass him until you have turned the half-mile.”

“Yes, sah,” answers the small jockey, trembling. “But Dashaway, he c’yarn run much, sah, ’thout blowin’, an’—an’—”

“Zounds, sirrah, do you mean to instruct me about my own horse? Now listen you young imp. Use the whip moderately, Dashaway comes of stock that won’t stand whip and spur. If he runs away, just give him his head, and if you don’t remember every word I tell you, by the Lord Harry, I’ll make you dance by the time you are out of the saddle!”

“Good Gord A’mighty, marster,” puts in Petrarch. “Dashaway, he ain’ never gwi’ run away. He too ole, an’ he ain’t strong ’nuff—”

“Good Gad, sir, was ever a man so tormented by such a set of black rascals? Hold your tongue—don’t let me hear another word from you, not another word, sir.”

The jockey, who takes the Colonel’s words at their full value, which Petrarch discounts liberally, begins to stutter with fright.

“M—m—marster, ef I jes’ kin git Dashaway ’long wid de res’—”

“Silence, sir,” shouts the Colonel, “and remember every word I tell you, or——” Colonel Berkeley’s appalling countenance and uplifted cane complete the rest.

Dashaway is not only conspicuously the worst of the lot, but the most troublesome. Half a dozen good starts might be made but for Dashaway. At last the flag drops. “Go!” yells the starter, and the horses are off. Dashaway takes his place promptly in the rear, and daylight steadily widens between him and the last horse. As the field comes thundering down the homestretch the spanking roan well in the lead, Dashaway is at least a quarter of a mile behind, blowing like a whale, and the jockey is whipping furiously, his arm flying around like a windmill. The Colonel is fairly dancing with rage.

Colonel Berkeley is not the man to lose a race to the Hibbses with composure, and Petrarch’s condolences, reminiscences, prophecies and deductions were not of a consolatory character.

“Ole Marse, I done tole you, Dashaway warn’t fitten ter run, at de very startment. He been a mighty good horse, but he c’yarn snuffle de battle fum befo’, an’ say Hay! hay! like de horse in de Bible no mo’.”

“Shut up, sir—shut up. Religion and horse racing don’t mix,” roars the Colonel.

“Naw suh, dey doan! When de horse racin’ folks is burnin’ in de lake full er brimstone an’ sulphur, de ’ligious folks will be rastlin’ wid de golden harps—” Petrarch’s sermon is cut ruthlessly short by Colonel Berkeley suddenly catching sight of the unfortunate jockey in a vain attempt to get out of the way. But his day of reckoning had come. Petrarch had collared him, and the Colonel proceeded to give him what he called a dressing-down, liberally punctuated with flourishes of a bamboo cane.

“Didn’t I tell you,” he was shouting to the unhappy youngster, “to make the running—to make the running, hay?”

“M—m—marster, I ’clar to Gord, I thot’ Dashaway wuz gw’in’ to drap ’fo I git him to de half-mile pos’—”

“Drap—you scoundrel, drap! The blood of Sir Henry drap! You confounded rascal, you pulled that horse,” etc., etc., etc.

Mrs. Peyton laughed. “It does my heart good to hear Tom Berkeley raging like that. It reminds me that we are not all dead or changed, as it seems to me sometimes. Your father and I have had passages-at-arms in my time, I can tell you, Olivia.”

Clang! presently again. It is the saddling bell once more. But there is no Dashaway in this race. Nevertheless it is very exciting. There are half a dozen horses, and after the start is made it looks to be anybody’s race. Even as they come pounding down the straight sweep of the last two furlongs, it would be hard to pick out the probable winner. The people on the grand stand have gone wild—they are shouting names, the men waving their hats, the women standing up on benches to see as two or three horses gradually draw away from the others, and a desperate struggle is promised within the last thirty lengths. And just at this moment, when everybody’s attention is fixed on the incoming horses, French Pembroke has slipped across the track and is speaking to the blonde woman in the victoria. His face does not look pleasant. He has chosen this moment, when all attention is fixed on something else to speak to her, so that it will not be observed—and although he adopts the subterfuge, he despises it. Nor does the blonde woman fail to see through it. She does not relish being spoken to on the sly as it were. Nothing, however, disturbs the cheerful urbanity of the gentleman by her side. He gets out of the carriage and grasps Pembroke by the hand. He calls him “mon cher” a vulgar mode of address which Pembroke resents with a curt “Good-morning, Mr. Ahlberg,” and then he lifts his hat to the lady whom he calls Madame Koller. “Why did you not come before?” she asks, “you might have known it would be dull enough.”

“Don’t you know everybody here?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Madame Koller, sighing profoundly. “I remember all of them—and most of the men have called. Some of them are so strange. They stay all day when they come. And such queer carriages.”

“And the costumes. The costumes!” adds Mr. Ahlberg on the ground.

Pembroke felt a sense of helpless indignation. He answered Mr. Ahlberg by turning his back, and completely ignoring that excessively stylish person.

“You must remember the four years’ harrowing they have been through,” he says to Madame Koller. “But they are so thoroughly established in their own esteem,” he adds with a little malice, “that they are indifferent even to the disapproval of Madame Koller. I am glad to see you looking so well. I must, however, leave you now, as I am one of the managers, and must look after the weighing.”

“Now you are going away because I have been disagreeable,” remarked Madame Koller reproachfully. “And poor Ahlberg—”

“Must take care of you, and do his best to amuse you,” answered Pembroke with a laugh and a look that classed Ahlberg with Madame’s poodle or her parrot. “Good-bye,” and in a minute he was gone. Madame Koller looked sulky. Mr. Ahlberg’s good humor and composure were perfectly unruffled.

Hardly any one noticed Pembroke’s little expedition except Mrs. Peyton and Olivia Berkeley. Mrs. Peyton mounted a pair of large gold spectacles, and then remarked to Olivia:

“My dear, there’s French Pembroke talking to my niece, Eliza Peyton—” Mrs. Peyton was a Peyton before she married one—“Madame Elise Koller she now calls herself.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I suppose you saw a good deal of her in Paris, and my sister-in-law, Sarah Scaife that was—now Madame Schmidt. She showed me the dear departed’s picture the other day—a horrid little wretch he looked, while my brother, Edmund Peyton, was the handsomest young man in the county.”

“We saw Madame Koller quite often,” said Olivia. Mrs. Peyton was amazingly clever as a mind reader, and saw in a moment there was no love lost between Olivia Berkeley and Madame Koller.

“And that Mr. Ahlberg. Sarah Scaife says he is a cousin of Eliza’s—I mean Elise’s—husband.”

“I should think if anybody knew the facts in the case it would be Sarah Scaife, as you call her,” replied Olivia laughing. “I believe he is a very harmless kind of a man.”

At that Mrs. Peyton took off her spectacles and looked at Olivia keenly.

“I hate to believe you are a goose,” she said, good-naturedly; “but you must be very innocent. Harmless! That is the very thing that man is not.”

“So papa says, but I think it comes from Mr. Ahlberg eating asparagus with his fingers and not knowing how to play whist, or something of the kind. I have seen him on and off at watering places, and in Paris for two or three years. I never saw him do anything that wasn’t quite right—and I never heard anything against him except what you and papa say—and that is rather indefinite.”

“And you didn’t observe my niece with French Pembroke, did you?”

Olivia Berkeley’s face turned a warm color. Such very plain spoken persons as Mrs. Peyton were a little embarrassing. But just then came the sound of the Colonel’s voice, raised at a considerable distance.

“Olivia, my love—God bless my soul—Mrs. Peyton—there’s that charming niece of yours—what a creature she was when she lived in this county as Eliza Peyton—a regular stunner, begad—I must go and speak to her—and my particular friend, Ahlberg—excuse me a moment, my love.” Colonel Berkeley stalked across the track, receiving all the attention which Pembroke had tried to avoid. Life in his beloved Virginia had almost driven the Colonel distracted by its dullness, and he could not but welcome a fellow creature from the outside. He buttoned his light overcoat trimly around his still handsome figure, and bowed majestically when he reached the carriage. Madame Koller returned the bow with a brilliant smile. She was beginning to feel very much alone, albeit she was in her native county, and she welcomed Colonel Berkeley as a deliverer. Evidently she soothed him about Dashaway. Pembroke, passing by, heard scraps like the following:

“I have seen just such things at the Grand Prix—”

“Madame, the infernal system here of putting up irresponsible negro boys—”

“I could see he had a superb stride—”

“Dashaway, Madame Koller, comes from the very best stock in the State of Virginia.”

The day wore on, and by dint of spinning things out most unconscionably it was dusk of the clear autumn evening before the cavalcade took the dusty white road toward home. In “the Isleham carriage” Colonel Berkeley leaned back and waxed confidential with his daughter.

“My dear, Eliza Peyton—Madame Koller I should say—is what you young sprigs call green—excessively green. She imagines because I am old I am a fool. And that precious scamp, Ahlberg—”

“Why do you call him a scamp, papa?”

“Why do I call Petrarch an African?”

“Mrs. Peyton seems to have some kind of a prejudice to Mr. Ahlberg, too.”

“Aha, trust Sally Peyton to see for herself. She’s devilish tricky, is Sally Peyton—not that I have any cause to complain of it—none whatever. She’s very sharp. But we’ll go and call some day on Eli—Madame Koller. She’s not bad company for the country—and I’ve heard she could sing, too.”

“Yes, we will go,” answered Olivia, suppressing a yawn. “It’s in the country, as you say.”

CHAPTER II.

Does anybody ever ask what becomes of the prime donne who break down early? Madame Koller could have told something about their miseries, from the first struggling steps up to the pinnacle when they can fight with managers, down again to the point when the most dreadful sound that nature holds—so she thought—a hiss—laid them figuratively among the dead. Nature generally works methodically, but in Madame Koller’s case, she seemed to take a delight in producing grapes from thorns. Without one atom of artistic heredity, surroundings or atmosphere to draw upon, Eliza Peyton had come into the world an artist. She had a voice, and she grew up with the conviction that there was nothing in the world but voices and pianos. It is not necessary to repeat how in her girlhood, by dint of her widowed mother marrying a third rate German professor, she got to Munich and to Milan—nor how the voice, at first astonishingly pure and beautiful, suddenly lost its pitch, then disappeared altogether. It is true that after a time it came back to her partially. She could count on it for an hour at a time, but no more. Of course there was no longer any career for her, and she nearly went crazy with grief—then she consoled herself with M. Koller, an elderly Swiss manufacturer. In some way, although she was young and handsome and accomplished, she found in her continental travels that the best Americans and English avoided the Kollers. This she rashly attributed to the fact of her having had a brief professional career, and she became as anxious to conceal it as she had once been anxious to pursue it. M. Koller was a hypochondriac, and went from Carlsbad to Wiesbaden, from Wiesbaden to Hyéres, from Hyéres to Aix-les-Bains. He was always fancying himself dying, but one day at Vichy, death came quite unceremoniously and claimed him just as he had made up his mind to get well. Thus Eliza Koller found herself a widow, still young and handsome, with a comfortable fortune, and a negative mother to play propriety. She went straight to Paris as soon as the period of her mourning was over. It was then toward the latter part of the civil war in America, and there were plenty of Southerners in Paris. There she met Colonel Berkeley and Olivia, and for the first time in her adult life, she had a fixed place in society—there was a circle in which she was known.

What most troubled her, was what rôle to take up—whether she should be an American, a French woman, an Italian, a German, or a cosmopolitan. For she was like all, and was distinctively none. In Paris at that time, she met a cousin of her late husband—Mr. Ahlberg, also a Swiss, but in the Russian diplomatic service. He was a sixth Secretary of Legation, and had hard work making his small salary meet his expenses. He was a handsome man, very blonde, and extremely well-dressed. Madame Koller often wondered if his tailor were not a very confiding person. For Ahlberg’s part, he sincerely liked his cousin, as he called her, and quite naturally slipped into the position of a friend of the family. Everything perhaps would have been arranged to his satisfaction, if just at that time the war had not closed, and French Pembroke and his brother came to Paris that the surgeons might work upon poor Miles. They could not but meet often at the Berkeleys, and Pembroke, it must be admitted, was not devoid of admiration for the handsome Madame Koller, who had the divine voice—when she could be persuaded to sing, which was not often. He had been rather attentive to her, much to Ahlberg’s disgust. And to Ahlberg’s infinite rage, Madame Koller fell distinctly and unmistakably in love with Pembroke. If Ahlberg had only known the truth, Pembroke was really the first gentleman that poor Madame Koller had ever known intimately since her childhood in Virginia. Certainly the wildest stretch of imagination could not call the late Koller a gentleman, and even Ahlberg himself, although a member of the diplomatic corps, hardly came under that description.

Pembroke had a kind of hazy idea that widows could take care of themselves. Besides, he was not really in love with her—only a little dazzled by her voice and her yellow hair. His wrath may be imagined when after a considerable wrench in tearing himself away from Paris, and when he had begun to regard Olivia Berkeley with that lofty approval which sometimes precedes love making, to return to Virginia, and in six weeks to find Madame Schmidt and Madame Koller established at their old place, The Beeches, and Ahlberg, who had been their shadow for two years, living at the village tavern. He felt that this following him, on the part of Madame Koller, made him ridiculous. He was mortally afraid of being laughed at about it. Instead of holding his own stoutly in acrid discussions with Colonel Berkeley, Pembroke began to be afraid of the old gentleman’s pointed allusions to the widow. He even got angry with poor little Miles when the boy ventured upon a little sly chaff. As for Olivia Berkeley, she took Madame Koller’s conduct in coming to Virginia in high dudgeon, with that charming inconsequence of noble and inexperienced women. What particular offense it gave her, beyond the appearance of following Pembroke, which was shocking to her good taste, she could not have explained to have saved her life. But with Madame Koller she took a tone of politeness, sweet yet chilly, like frozen cream—and the same in a less degree, toward Pembroke. She seemed to say, “Odious and underbred as this thing is, I, you see, can afford to be magnanimous.” Colonel Berkeley chuckled at this on the part of his daughter, as he habitually did at the innocent foibles of his fellow creatures. It was very innocent, very feminine, and very exasperating.

Nevertheless, within a week the big landau was drawn up, and Colonel Berkeley and his daughter set forth, en grand tenue, with Petrarch on the box, to call on Madame Koller. The Colonel had never ceased teasing his daughter to go. Time hung heavy on his hands, and although he had not found Madame Koller particularly captivating elsewhere, and Madame Schmidt bored him to death upon the few occasions when she appeared, yet, when he was at Isleham, the ladies at The Beeches assumed quite a fascinating aspect to his imagination. The Colonel had a private notion of his own that Madame Koller had been a little too free with her income, and that a year’s retirement would contribute to the health of her finances. Olivia, however, believed that Madame Koller had but one object in returning to America, and that was because Pembroke had come. She remembered one evening in Paris, Pembroke had “dropped in,” American fashion. The doctors had then said that nothing could be done to restore poor Miles to comeliness—and meanwhile, another blow had fallen upon the two brothers. Their only sister, Elizabeth, a handsome, high spirited girl, older than they, had died—and there had been a violent breach between her and their father to which death alone put a truce. When the country was overrun with troops, a Federal officer had protected the plantation as far as he could, had saved the old father from the consequences of his own rash conduct, and had taken a deep and tender interest in the daughter. This was enough to blast Elizabeth’s life. She gave up her lover—silently, but with a strange unyielding gentleness, she kept aloof from her father. She was not condemned to suffer long. The unhappy father followed her swiftly to the old burying ground at Malvern. Men commonly seek distraction in griefs. Pembroke was like the rest. He was popular, especially among the English colony where his love of sports and manly accomplishments made him a favorite—to say nothing of that prestige, which attaches to a man who has seen service. He had gone into the war a lieutenant, and had come out as major of his ragged, half-starved regiment. Therefore when Pembroke idled and amused himself in Paris, for some time Olivia could only feel sympathy for him. She knew well enough that his means were small and the company he kept was liable to diminish them—but after a while, she began to feel a hot indignation against him. So on this particular evening, the Colonel falling asleep opportunely, she took occasion to express her opinion to Pembroke, that their ruined country needed the presence and the service of every man she could call her own. Pembroke defended himself warmly at first. He came for Miles’ sake—the boy whom he had thought safe at school, and who ran away in the very last days of the war to enlist—and almost the last shot that was fired—so Pembroke said bitterly—disfigured the boy as he now was. Miles had been eager to come, although Pembroke was convinced from the beginning that neither the French, nor any other surgeons could repair the work of that shot. He admitted that the boy had borne the final decision with great manliness and courage “for such a little chap,” the elder brother said fondly. When pressed hard by Olivia about returning home, Pembroke though had no resource but epigrams.

“At all events,” she said presently, with a pretty air of heroism, “Papa and I are going home just as soon as papa can do without his crutch. Papa is a patriot, although he does talk so remarkably sometimes.”

“Then, after you have got back, you can let me know how you like Virginia as it is, and perhaps I will follow,” he answered, laughing in a very exasperating way, Olivia thought. But when the Berkeleys got home they found that the Pembrokes had arrived some weeks before them—and soon afterward Madame Koller and her mother turned up quite unexpectedly at their deserted old place, only to be followed shortly after by Ahlberg, who, from his abode at the village tavern rode over every day on a sorry nag, to see Madame Koller.

Imagine all this in a provincial country neighborhood!

Mr. Cole, the clergyman of Petsworth parish, was a bachelor, a small, neatly-featured person, suspected of High Church leanings. The Colonel had bluntly inquired of him if he intended to call on Madame Koller.

“Hardly, I think, sir,” responded Mr. Cole, with much severity. “She has not once been to church since she returned to the county—and she only two miles off—and I hear that she and her friend Mr. Ahlberg play billiards all day long Sunday, when they are not playing cards.”

“Only the more reason for you to convert the heathen, ha! ha!” answered the Colonel—“and let me tell you, Cole, if you hadn’t been a clergyman, you would have been a regular slayer among the women—and the heathen in this case is about as pretty a heathen as you can find in the State of Virginia, sir.”

Evidently these remarks made a great impression on Mr. Cole, for on the sunny afternoon, when Colonel Berkeley and Olivia drove up to the door of The Beeches, they saw a clerical looking figure disappear ahead of them within the doorway.

“The parson’s here, by Jove,” chuckled the Colonel.

The house was modern and rather showy. Inside there were evidences that Madame Koller was not devoid of taste or money either. The Berkeleys were ushered into a big square drawing-room, where, seated in a high-backed chair, with his feet barely touching the floor, was the little clergyman.

“Why, Cole, I am deuced glad you took my advice,” cried the Colonel, advancing with outstretched hand and with a kind of hearty good fellowship that pleased Mr. Cole, and yet frightened him a little. He was a good soul and divided his small salary with his mother, but he thought Colonel Berkeley’s society rather dangerous for a clergyman. He used too many expletives, and was altogether too free in his notions of what a churchman should be—for the Colonel was a stanch churchman, and would have sworn like a pirate at anybody who questioned his orthodoxy.

“Doing missionary work, hay, Mr. Cole?” continued Colonel Berkeley, while Olivia and Mr. Cole shook hands.

A faint pink mounted into the clergyman’s face. His curiosity had got the better of him, but the excellent little man fancied it was his Christian charity that won the victory.

“Well, Colonel,” he begun, “upon reflection I concluded it was my duty to call on Madame Koller. I wasn’t in this parish—in fact, I wasn’t ordained at the time Madame Koller was Miss Eliza Peyton, and Madame Schmidt was Mrs. Edward Peyton. And being the niece of my excellent friend—Mrs. Sally Peyton—”

“Excellent friend, eh—well, don’t you trust Sally Peyton too far, my good fellow. She was a mighty uncertain kind of a friend thirty or forty years ago—not that I have any particular reason for saying so. But you are quite right in paying your respects to Eliza Peyton—I mean Madame Koller, and I only hope she’ll find our society agreeable enough to stay here.”

A considerable wait ensued. Olivia had begun to wonder how long it took Madame Koller to make a complete toilet, when a white hand moved the curtain from a doorway, and noiselessly and gently Madame Koller entered.

She was heartily glad to see them—their call was not very prompt, but it would have been a cruel mortification had they omitted to come. Olivia’s hand she pressed—so she did the Colonel’s—and also Mr. Cole’s, who colored quite violently, although he struggled for self-possession.

“We are very glad you have come,” said Olivia, with her sweetest affability, “you will be a great acquisition to the neighborhood. You see, I am already beginning to think more of our own neighborhood than all the rest of the universe.”

“Thank you for your kindness,” answered Madame Koller, with equal cordiality. The two women, however, did not cease to examine each other like gladiators.

“And Mr. Cole, I think you were not here when I lived at The Beeches as a girl.”

“No, madam,” replied Mr. Cole, who had now shaded from a red to a pink.

“And did I not have the pleasure of seeing you at the Campdown races the other day?”

Mr. Cole turned pale and nearly dropped off his chair. The Colonel roared out his pleasant cheery laugh.

“No madam, you did not.” Mr. Cole made his denial so emphatic that he was ashamed of himself for it afterwards.

“But you, Miss Berkeley, were there. My cousin Ahlberg saw you. He praised you. He complimented you. ‘I have often seen that face,’ he said. ‘There are some faces which one remembers even in the whirl of the greatest cities. I drive around the Bois de Boulogne—once—twice—three times. I speak to a hundred friends. I see a thousand faces. They pass before me like shadows of the night. One face strikes me. It rises like a star from out the sea. Ah, I exclaim, ‘here is another photograph for my mental portrait gallery.’”

Neither the Colonel nor Olivia was fully prepared to accept Ahlberg. Consequently, Madame Koller’s remark was received with a cool smile by Olivia—and a sniff by the Colonel. But Mr. Cole was quite carried away by Madame Koller’s declamatory manner, and her really beautiful voice.

“What a gift of tongues,” he said. “Madame Koller, if a—er—public speaker—a religious instructor had your felicity of expression—”

“I trust,” answered Madame, “some time to have the pleasure of hearing your felicity of expression. I am not what you call a Christian. I believe in a system of ultimate good—a philosophy if you will—”

“Yes, yes,” cordially chimed in Colonel Berkeley with something dangerously like a wink, “I knew Madame, as soon as I saw you that you believed in a system. It’s very useful and elastic and philosophic.”

Madame playfully waved her hand at the colonel, and turned to Mr. Cole.

“We will be friends, nevertheless,” she said with a captivating smile. “I will visit your church in the morning, and you will return to luncheon with me, and we will have a little game of billiards afterward.”

Mr. Cole’s delicate face grew ashy. He, John Chrysostom Cole, playing billiards on Sunday! What would his mother say—and what would the bishop say! Olivia looked a little shocked because of course Madame Koller must know better. Not so the Colonel. He laughed heartlessly at Mr. Cole, and began to think Eliza Peyton was a more amusing person than he had fancied.

“Madame Koller,” began Mr. Cole solemnly after a moment, “your long absence from this country—your unfamiliarity with clergymen perhaps—and with the American Sabbath—”

“Oh, yes, I remember the American Sabbath very well,” replied Madame Koller laughing and raising her eyebrows. “My aunt, Mrs. Peyton, always took me to church with her, and I had to listen to Dr. Steptoe’s sermons. Oh those sermons! However,” she added, turning her expressive eyes full on Mr. Cole. “I know, I know yours must be very different. Well, I will go. And forgive me, if I sometimes shock you—forgive and pity me.”

Mr. Cole thought that only a heart of stone could have hardened against that pretty appeal. And the widow was so deliciously charming with her half-foreign manner and her whole-foreign look. But billiards on Sunday!

“Extend the invitation to me, ma’am,” said the Colonel. “I go to church on Sunday—I have no system, just the plain religious belief of a churchman and a gentleman—my ancestors were not a lot of psalm-singing hypocrites, but cavaliers, madam, from the Court of Charles the Second. But after I’ve been to church to please my conscience and my daughter, I don’t mind pleasing myself a little. I’ll play billiards with you—”

The door opened and Ahlberg appeared. Now Mr. Ahlberg was not a favorite of Colonel Berkeley’s at any time—still less of Olivia’s; but it was in the country, and it was very, very dull, so he got the most cordial greeting he had ever had from either of them. The conversation became general, and as soon as Ahlberg had the opportunity, he edged toward Olivia. He was no gentle, unsophisticated creature, like Mr. Cole. He knew that Olivia Berkeley’s polite and self-possessed manner toward him concealed a certain hardness. He made no particular headway in her good graces he saw—and not much more in the Colonel’s. But both gentlemen were hard up for amusement, and each was willing to be amused, so, when Mr. Ahlberg, after a few well-bred vacuities with Olivia, devoted himself to Colonel Berkeley, he was rewarded with the intimation that the Colonel would call on him at the village tavern, and this was followed up by another hint of a dinner invitation to follow. This cheered Mr. Ahlberg very much, for to tell the truth he was as near starvation as a man could be in this nineteenth century, who had money in his pocket. If, however, Mr. Ahlberg had made it his business to horrify Mr. Cole, he could not have done it more thoroughly. He bewailed the absence of book-makers at the races, and wished to know why elections were not held in America on Sunday, took occasion to say that religion was merely an affair of the State, and he too was a believer in a system. When they all rose to go, poor Mr. Cole was quite limp and overcome, but he made an effort to retain his self-possession. He urged both Madame Koller and Mr. Ahlberg to attend the morning service on the following Sunday. Both promised conditionally.

The clergyman had walked over from the rectory where his mother presided over his modest establishment.

“Come, Cole,” cried the Colonel, who was the soul of hospitality, “here’s another seat in the carriage. Come back to dinner with us. I’ve got some capital champagne, and Olivia will play for you.”

“I don’t care about the champagne, thank you,” answered Mr. Cole, “but I’ll come for the pleasure of Miss Olivia’s playing and her society also.”

Scarcely had the carriage turned into the lane, when Mr. Cole burst forth:

“Miss Olivia, did you ever meet a more godless person in your life than Mr. Ahlberg?”

“I don’t think I ever did,” answered Olivia, with much sincerity.

“But the widow—Eliza Peyton—eh, Cole? I think you have made some headway there,” cried the Colonel, wagging his head at the little clergyman. Mr. Cole’s heart began to thump. Strange it was that although he ought, as a Christian and a clergyman, to disapprove of Madame Koller with her beautiful blonde hair, he could not find it in his heart to feel it. Nevertheless he could say it easily enough.

“I very much doubt, sir, the propriety of my visiting at The Beeches.”

“Pooh, pooh. You’ll get over it,” chuckled Colonel Berkeley.

Ah, John Chrysostom! Has it never been known that the outward man denounced what the inward man yearned and hankered after? At this very moment do you not remember the turn of Madame Koller’s handsome head, and the faint perfume that exhaled from her trailing gown?

“We must invite them to dinner,” said the Colonel, decidedly. “Cole, you must come, too. That poor devil, Ahlberg, is almost starved at the tavern on fried chicken three times a day, and claret from the tavern bar.”

CHAPTER III.

A round of solemn afternoon dinings followed the return of the Berkeleys to Isleham, and were scrupulously returned. But both the Colonel and Olivia felt that it would not be well to include any of the county gentry the day Madame Koller and Mr. Ahlberg were to dine with them. Mr. Cole had already been invited—and Colonel Berkeley of his own free will, without saying a word to Olivia, asked the two Pembrokes. Olivia, when she heard of this, was intensely vexed. She had used both sarcasm and persuasion on Pembroke in Paris to get him home, and he had laughed at her. Yet she was firmly convinced, as soon as Madame Koller expressed a determination to come, either Pembroke had agreed, or else Madame Koller had followed him—in either case Olivia was not pleased, and received the Colonel’s information that the Pembrokes would be there sure in ominous silence. Nothing remained but for her to show what a remarkably good dinner she could give—and this she felt was clearly within her power. She was naturally a clever housekeeper, and as the case often was in those days, the freedom of the negroes had made but little difference in the ménage at Isleham. Most of the house servants had turned squatters on the plantation. Petrarch, unpopular among his confrères because of his superior advantages and accomplishments as well as his assumption of righteousness, was the major-domo—and then there was Ike, a gingerbread colored Chesterfield, as dining-room servant.

“Miss ’Livy, you jes’ let me manage dem black niggers,” was Petrarch’s sensible advice. “Dey doan know nuttin’ ’bout a real swell dinner. I say yistiddy to Cook M’ria, ‘Why doan yer have some orntrees fur dinner outen all dat chicken an’ truck you has lef’ over ev’y day?’ an’ Miss ’Livy, ef you will b’lieve me, dat nigger, she chase me outen de kitchen wid a shovel full o’ live coals. She ain’ got no ’spect for ’ligion. Arter I got out in de yard, I say, ‘You discontemptuous, disreligious ole cantamount, doan’ you know better’n to sass de Lord’s ’n’inted?’” (this being Petrarch’s favorite characterization of himself). “But M’ria ain’ got de sperrit ’scusin’ ’tis de sperrit o’ owdaciousness. Ez fur dat Ike, I done tole him ‘I am de Gord o’ respicution,’ an’ he ’low I ain’t no sech a thing. I gwi’n lick dat yaller nigger fo’ long.”

“You’d better not try it Uncle Petrarch—” (Petrarch was near to sixty, and was therefore by courtesy, Uncle Petrarch). “Ike won’t stand it, and I won’t have it either, I can tell you.”

The Berkeleys went against the county custom, and dined in the evening. Therefore, at seven o’clock precisely, on the evening of the dinner, French Pembroke and his brother entered the quaint old drawing-room at Isleham. Olivia had learned the possibilities of ancient mahogany furniture and family portraits, and the great rambling old house was picturesque enough. A genuine Virginia wood fire roared up the chimney, where most of the heat as well as the flame went. Wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks, were on the mantel, and the piano. Miss Berkeley herself, in a white wool gown, looked a part of the pleasant home-like picture, as she greeted her two guests. French Pembroke had called twice to see them, but neither time had Olivia been at home. This, then, was their first meeting, except the few minutes at the races. He was the same easy, pleasantly cynical Pembroke she had known in Paris. There was another French Pembroke whom she remembered in her childish days as very good natured, when he was not very tyrannical, in the visits she used to pay with her dead and gone mother long ago to Malvern—and this other Pembroke could recite wonderful poetry out of books, and scare little Miles and herself into delicious spasms of terror by the weird stories he would tell. But Miles had changed in every way. He had been in his earlier boyish days the pet and darling of women, but now he slunk away from the pity in their tender eyes. He had once had a mannish little strut and a way of looking out of his bold blue eyes that made a path for him wherever he chose to tread. But now he shambled in, keeping as far out of sight as possible behind the elder brother’s stalwart figure.

Colonel Berkeley shook Miles’s one hand cordially. His armless sleeve was pinned up to his coat front.

“God bless my soul,” the Colonel cried. “Am I getting old? Here’s little Miles Pembroke almost a man.”

“Almost—papa—you mean quite a man. It is a dreadful reflection to me that I am older than Miles,” said Olivia, smiling. Then they sat about the fire, and Olivia, putting her fan down in her lap, looked French Pembroke full in the face and said, “You know, perhaps, that Madame Koller and Mr. Ahlberg dine here to-night?”

“Yes,” answered Pembroke, with all the coolness of conscious innocence—or brazen assurance of careless wickedness, Olivia could not tell which.

“You saw a good deal of them abroad, didn’t you?” was her next question.

“Yes,” again replied Pembroke.

“Olivia, my dear,” said her father, who very much enjoyed this little episode, “you women will never learn that you can’t find anything out by asking questions; and Pembroke, my boy, remember that women never believe you except when you are lying to them. Let him alone, Olivia, and he will tell you the whole story, I’ll warrant.”

Olivia’s training had made her something of a stoic under Colonel Berkeley’s remarks, but at this a deep red dyed her clear pale face. She was the best of daughters, but she could at that moment have cheerfully inflicted condign punishment on her father. Pembroke saw it too, not without a little malicious satisfaction. She had quietly assumed in her tone and manner that he was in some way responsible for Madame Koller and her mother being at The Beeches—an incident fraught with much discomfort for him—none the less that there was nothing tragic about it, but rather ridiculous. All the same, he determined to set himself right on the spot.

“Of course, I saw them often. It would have been quite unpardonable if I had not, considering we were often in the same places—and our land joins. I can’t say that I recollect Madame Koller very much before she went away. I only remember her as rather an ugly little thing, always strumming on the piano. I took the liberty of telling both her and Madame Schmidt that I did not think they would find a winter at The Beeches very pleasant—but it seems she did not agree with me. Ahlberg is a cousin by marriage, and has been in the diplomatic corps—”

And at that very moment Petrarch threw open the drawing-room door and announced “Mrs. Koller and Mr. Ahlberg, sah.”

Madame Koller’s appearance was none the less striking in evening dress, with ropes of amber around her neck, and some very fine diamonds. Who says that women are indifferent to each other? The instant Olivia beheld Madame Koller in her gorgeous trailing gown of yellow silk, and her jewels, she felt plain, insignificant, and colorless both in features, dress and manner—while Madame Koller, albeit she knew both herself and other women singularly well, almost envied Olivia the girlish simplicity, the slightness and grace that made her a pretty picture in her white gown with the bunch of late autumn roses at her belt.

The clergyman came last. Then Petrarch opened the folding doors and announced dinner, and Colonel Berkeley gallantly offering his arm to Madame Koller, they all marched in.

Something like a sigh of satisfaction escaped Mr. Ahlberg. Once more he was to dine. Madame Koller sat on the Colonel’s right, and at her right was Mr. Cole. The clergyman’s innocent heart beat when he saw this arrangement. He still fancied that he strongly disapproved of Madame Koller, the more so when he saw the nonchalant way in which she took champagne and utterly ignored the carafe of water at her plate. Mr. Cole took only claret, and watered that liberally.

Madame Koller certainly had a very pretty manner—rather elaborate and altogether different from Olivia’s self-possessed simplicity. She spoke of her mother—“so happy once more to be back in Virginia.” Madame Schmidt, always wrapped up in shawls, and who never volunteered a remark to anybody in her life, scarcely seemed to outsiders to be quite capable of any enjoyment. And Aunt Peyton—dear Aunt Peyton—so kind, so handsome—so anxious that people shall please themselves—“Upon my soul, madam,” cried the Colonel, with much hearty good humor, “I am delighted to hear that last about my old friend Sally Peyton. I’ve known her well for fifty years—perhaps she wouldn’t acknowledge it—and a more headstrong, determined, self-willed woman I never saw. Sally is a good woman, and by heaven, she was a devilish pretty one when—when—you may have heard the story, ma’am—but she always wanted to please herself a d—n sight more than anybody else—including Ned Peyton.”

The Colonel said this quite pleasantly, and Madame Koller smiled at it—she seldom laughed. “Were you not some years in the army, Colonel Berkeley?” she asked presently. “It seems to me I have some recollection of having heard it.” Colonel Berkeley colored slightly. He valued his military title highly, but he didn’t know exactly how he came by it.

“The fact is madam,” he replied, clearing his throat, “in the old days we had a splendid militia. Don’t you remember the general musters, hay? Now I was the—the commanding officer of the Virginia Invincibles—a crack cavalry company, composed exclusively of the county gentlemen—and in some way, they called me colonel, and a colonel I remained.”

“The title seems quite natural,” said Madame Koller, with a sweet smile—“You have such a military carriage—that indescribable air—” at which the Colonel, who never tired of laughing at other people’s foibles, straightened up, assumed a martial pose, and showed vast elation and immense pleasure—which Madame Koller saw out of the corner of her eye.

Miles, sitting next Olivia, had grown confidential. “I—I—want to tell you,” he said bashfully, “the reason why I didn’t come to see you in Paris. It required some nerve for a fellow—in my condition—to face a woman—even the best and kindest.”

“Was that it?” answered Olivia half smiling.

“You are laughing at me,” he said reproachfully.

“Of course I am,” replied Olivia.

A genuine look of relief stole into his poor face. Perhaps it was not so bad after all if Olivia Berkeley could laugh at his sensitiveness.

“So,” continued Olivia, promptly, “you acted like a vain, foolish boy. But I see you are getting over it.”

“I’ll try. You wouldn’t treat me so cavalierly, would you, if—if—it were quite—dreadful?”

“No, it isn’t dreadful at all, or anything like it,” replied Olivia, telling one of those generous and womanly fibs that all true women utter with the full approval of their consciences.

Meanwhile, Ahlberg and Pembroke had been conversing. Ahlberg was indeed a clever fellow—for he talked in a straightforward way, and gave not the slightest ground in anything he said for the suspicion that Pembroke obstinately cherished against him.

“What do you do with yourself all day, Miss Berkeley?” asked Pembroke after a while.

“There is plenty to do. I have a dozen servants to manage that ran wild while we were away—and the house to keep, and to look after the garden—and I ride or drive every day—and keep up my piano playing—and read a little. What do you do?”

“Nothing,” answered Pembroke, boldly.

Olivia did not say a word. She threw him one brief glance though, from her dark eyes that conveyed a volume.

“I have a license to practice law,” he continued, coolly. “I’ve had it for five years—got it just before the State went out, when I went out too. Four years’ soldiering isn’t a good preparation for the law.”

“Ah!” said Olivia.

“I have enough left, I daresay, to keep me without work,” he added.

If he had studied how to make himself contemptible in Olivia’s eyes, he could not have done so more completely. She had acquired perfect self-possession of manner, but her mobile face was as yet undisciplined. When to this last remark she said in her sweetest manner, “Won’t you let Petrarch fill your glass?” it was equivalent to saying, “You are the most worthless and contemptible creature on this planet.” Just then the Colonel’s cheery voice resounded from the foot of the table.

“Pembroke, when I drove through the Court House to-day, it made me feel like a young man again, to see your father’s old tin sign hanging out of the old office, ‘French Pembroke, Attorney at Law.’ It has been a good many years since that sign was first put up. Egad, your father and I have had some good times in that office, in the old, old days. He always kept a first-class brand of liquors. His style of serving it wasn’t very imposing, but it didn’t hurt the liquor. I’ve drank cognac fit for a king in that office, and drank it out of a shaving mug borrowed from the barber next door—ha! ha!”

A change like magic swept over Olivia’s face. It indicated great relief that Pembroke was not an idle scamp after all. She tried to look sternly and reproachfully at him, but a smile lurked in her eyes.

“You are not as lazy as I thought you, but twice as deceitful,” she said.

Pembroke was amused at the extreme suavity of the two ladies toward each other, knowing that at heart it masked an armed neutrality. Particularly did he notice it after dinner, when they returned to the drawing-room and the piano was opened. Madame Koller was asked to sing, but first begged that Miss Berkeley should play. Olivia, without protesting, went to the piano. Her playing was finished and artistic, and full of the delicate repose of a true musician. When she rose Madame Koller overflowed with compliments. “And now, madam,” said the Colonel, rising and offering his hand with a splendid and graceful flourish, “will you not let us hear that voice that charmed us when you were little Eliza Peyton.”

Madame Koller did not like to be called Eliza Peyton—it was too commonplace—Elise Koller was much more striking. And then she was uncertain whether to sing or not. She had tried hard to keep that stage episode secret, and she was afraid if she sang, that something might betray her. She glanced at Ahlberg, as much as to say, “Shall I?” but Ahlberg maintained a sphinx-like gravity. But the temptation was too great. Olivia’s playing was pretty for an amateur—but Madame Koller despised the best amateur performance as only a true professional can. Therefore she rose and went to the piano, and turned over some of the ballads there. She pretended to be looking at them, but she was not.

“Louis,” she said to Ahlberg, who was twisting his waxed mustache. He came at once and seated himself at the piano.

“What do you think of ‘Caro nome?’” she asked.

“Very good. You always sung the Rigoletto music well.”

Madame Koller was not pleased at this slip—but at all events, nobody but herself understood it in the sense that Ahlberg meant.

Ahlberg struck a few chords, and Madame Koller begun from memory the celebrated aria. As she sang, Colonel Berkeley opened his sharp old eyes very wide indeed. This was not the kind of music often heard in drawing-rooms. He glanced at Pembroke, to see if he was astonished. That young gentleman only leaned back in the sofa corner near the fire to better enjoy this delicious singing. Olivia’s face looked puzzled—so did Miles. In singing, Madame Koller was handsomer than ever. She had perfect control over her facial expression, and seemed quite transformed. Once or twice she used a graceful gesture, or made a step forward—it was highly dramatic, but not in the least stagy.

But if Madame Koller’s performance was far out of the common run, so was that of her accompanist. He looked remarkably at home on the piano stool, and Colonel Berkeley rubbed his eyes and tried to recall if he had ever seen Ahlberg ornamenting a piano stool at a concert, but could not remember. When the last brilliant note and rich chord died away Miles Pembroke suddenly began to clap his knee loudly with his one remaining hand—which produced a furious hand clapping, in which everybody else vehemently and involuntarily joined, Mr. Cole feebly shouting “Bravo! Bravo!” Madame Koller started, and when the applause ceased, she seemed like one coming out of a dream. In the buzz of compliments that followed, Ahlberg’s voice cut in saying, “You were too dramatic.”

Madame Koller had been receiving the compliments paid her with smiling grace, but at this, she cast a strange look on Ahlberg, nor would she sing again, although urged to do so. And presently it was time to leave, and Madame Koller and her escort departed in the little victoria which had come for them, the Colonel wrapping her up in innumerable furs to protect her from the sharp night air of November.

When he returned to the drawing-room, Olivia and the clergyman and the Pembrokes were all standing around the blazing fire. The Colonel walked in, and squaring himself before the generous fireplace with his coat tails over his arm, surveyed the company and remarked,

“Professional, by Jove.”

“Now, papa,” said Olivia, taking him by the arm, “you are the best and kindest of men, but you shan’t say ‘professional, by Jove,’ of Madame Koller, the very minute she has quitted your house. You know how often I’ve told you of my rule that you shall not mention the name of a guest until twenty-four hours after that guest’s departure.”

She said it with an air of authority, and tweaked the Colonel’s ear to emphasize her severity.

“But I am not saying any harm about her, Olivia.”

“Just what I expected,” groaned Mr. Cole.

“Perhaps her voice gave out, and she quitted the stage early,” remarked Pembroke.

“Not a word more,” cried Olivia sternly. “She sings delightfully. But—a—it was rather prima donna-ish.”

“Aha! Oho!” shouted the Colonel. “There you are, my dear!”

CHAPTER IV.

A week or two after the dinner at Isleham, Pembroke sat in his office, one afternoon, at the county-seat, with a letter spread out before him. It was very thumbed and illiterate, and quite devoid of punctuation.

“Marse french, i is in a heap of truble marse french an i aint done nuttin—i bought ten akers fum mr. Hackett you know mr. hackett he some relation to dem Hibbses he come frum i donow whar an he allus cussin de yankees an I had done pay him fur de ten akers mos all i had done got married ter Jane you know Jane whar was Miss livia Berkeley maid, an mr. hackett he come an he say he was gwine take the baid an he call me a low down nigger and kase I arnser him he hit me wid he stick an marse french i couldn’t help it an he hit Jane too an i knock him down an o marse french he went home an naix day he die an de sheriff he come an put me in jail—i feerd dey gwine hang me like a hound dog i aint got no money fur lawyers, an mr. hackett’s folks dem Hibbses dey is engage all de lawyers i dunno what i gwine do if you doan cum home to try me marse french—you know i was yur vally an daddy he was ole marse’s vally, an me an you useter go fishin when we was small an ole marse useter lick bofe on us fur gittin drownded in de crick i carn sleep at night, not kase de bed is hard an de straw cum thu de tickin but kase i feerd dey gwine ter hang me like a hound dog de black folks is agin me kase mr. hackett was fum de norf an de white folks is agin me kase mr. hackett was white o marse french fur Gord Amighty’s sake come long home and doan let em hang me Jane she is mighty poly an carn cum to see me sum gentmun swar at me you aint never done it—you give me a quarter evry time I hol yo horse No mo now from

“bob henry.”

This letter had reached him in Paris, and had more to do with bringing him home just when he came than Madame Koller—much more than Madame Koller expected—or Olivia, either, for that matter.

“It is a rather hard case,” he thought to himself, with a grim smile, “a man can’t go and say, ‘See what a disinterested thing I have done: come home months before I intended, to defend a poor ragged black rascal that claimed to be my “vally,” and expects to be hanged—and half the county believes I came in obedience to Madame Koller.’” But it occurred to him that he had done a good deal to make both Olivia Berkeley and Madame Koller believe what was not true about his return.

He put on his hat and, putting the letter in his pocket, went out and mounted his horse and rode off at a smart canter away from the village, down a little-used road, until he came to a stretch of pine woods. Then, following a bridle path a mile or more, he came upon a log house.

Everything had an air of sylvan peace in the quiet autumn afternoon. There was nothing to indicate domestic life about the place—the persons who lived within had no garden, no fowls—nothing but the log cabin under the pines. Pembroke knocked loudly with the butt of his riding whip at the rude door, but a voice a little way off answered him.

“Don’t waste your strength on the portcullis of the castle. Here I am.”

Pembroke followed the sound, leading his horse, and in a minute or two came upon a man of middle age, lying full length on the soft bed of pine needles, with a book and a pipe.

“This is peaceful,” said Pembroke, after tethering his horse and seating himself. “At Malvern it is more lonely than peaceful. The house is so large and so empty—Miles and I live in one wing of it. It wasn’t half a bad thing for you, Cave, when the doctors ordered you to the pine woods.”

Cave nodded.

“It’s uncommonly quiet and peaceful, this camping out. As I have no other house to go to, since mine was burned down, it rather bridges over the gulf of appearances to say I am living in a log cabin by command of the most mighty Dr. Sam Jones.”

“And there is no loneliness like that of a half deserted house,” continued Pembroke, unconsciously dropping his voice in sympathy with the faint woodland murmur around them. “It seems to me at Malvern that I continually hear my mother’s voice, and my father’s footstep, and all the pleasant family commotion I remember. And Elizabeth—Cave, no woman I ever knew suffered like my sister—and she was not the woman to suffer patiently. Old Keturah tells me that my father would have yielded at any time after he saw that her heart and life were bound up in Waring—but she would not ask him—so while I was enjoying myself three thousand miles away, and only sad when I came home to Miles, Elizabeth and my father were fighting that dreary battle. Keturah says that everybody said she was sweetly and gently patient, but all night she would walk the floor sobbing and weeping, while my father below walked his floor. It killed them both.”

Cave had turned away his head. Who has watched one, dearly loved, waste and die for another, without knowing all there is of bitterness? And was Pembroke so forgetful? He was not, indeed—but he had begun telling of the things which troubled him, and because he could bear to speak of poor Elizabeth he thought that Cave could bear to hear it. But there was a pause—a pause in which Pembroke suddenly felt ashamed and heartless. Elizabeth’s death was much to him—but it was everything to Cave. So Pembroke continued, rather to excuse himself, “Your cabin in the woods is at least not haunted by the dead people you loved. Sometimes, when I go into my mother’s room and see everything as she left it—the mirror in which I have often seen her braid her hair—she had scarcely a gray lock in it when she died—I feel—I cannot describe to you what I feel.”

“You ought to marry,” remarked Cave, in a cold, quiet voice.

“Not I,” answered Pembroke, carelessly, glad to escape from the train he had himself started. “I suppose a man ought to marry some time or other—but forty is early enough. I wouldn’t mind waiting until I were fifty. At sixty a man is apt to make an infernal fool of himself.”

“How about Eliza Peyton—or Madame Koller—whom you followed here?”

Pembroke had lighted a cigar since they began talking, and had disposed of himself comfortably on the pine needles by the side of his friend. The silence was the unbroken silence of the autumn woods. There was not the faintest whisper of wind, but over their heads the solemn trees leaned together and rustled softly. A long pause came after Cave’s question. Into Pembroke’s sunburnt face a dark flush slowly mounted. It is not often that a man of his type, with his iron jaw and strong features, blushes—but this was a blush of consciousness, though not of shame.

“I did not follow her here,” he said. “But who believes me? I think the woman herself fancies I did follow her. As for that little haughty Olivia Berkeley, the girl gives me a look that is equivalent to a box on the ear every time Madame Koller is mentioned. If ever I marry, I shan’t take a woman of spirit, you may depend upon it. I shall take a placid, stout creature. An eaglet like Olivia Berkeley is well enough for a man to amuse himself with—but for steady matrimony give me a barnyard fowl.”

“God help you,” answered Cave piously.

“But what really brought me here—although I knew all the time that I ought not to be loitering in Europe, and would probably have come anyhow—was this poor devil, Bob Henry, in jail, charged with murdering Hackett, that scalawag the Hibbses brought here.”

At this Cave sat up, full of animation.

“I can help the poor fellow, I think,” he said. “I went to see him as soon as they put him in jail—a wretched looking object in rags he was, too. He seemed to put great faith in you, and I did not tell him of some evidence that I have got hold of. The fellow’s going to get clear between us, I think.”

Pembroke sat up too, and took the cigar out of his mouth. The lawyer’s instinct rose within him, and he took to his profession like a pointer to his field work.

“You see, having been away during Hackett’s time, I know nothing of his habits or associations except from hearsay. Any lawyer in the county could do better for poor Bob Henry than I—in that way.”

“Hackett, you know, was a Northern man, who came down here and bought property during the war. He was a rabid Southerner. I distrusted the man for that alone. He was related to our friends, the Hibbses. I always suspected he had something to do with that gang of deserters down by the river, and if he was not a spy, then John Cave is a fool.”

“Well—what else?”

“Of course you know about Bob Henry’s buying the land of him, and the money he owed him, and the fight. The negro, after Hackett had struck him and insulted his wife, struck him back with a stick. Now the Hibbses, and everybody else for that matter, think that blow killed him. You see, among the people Hackett had a kind of false popularity, as a Northern man who has espoused Southern sentiments—a hypocrite, in short. The feeling against that poor black wretch was savage.”

“So,” said Pembroke, “instead of proving that the blow did kill Hackett, the jury will want it proved that it didn’t kill Hackett.”

“Exactly.”

“Hackett, I understand, was a convivial soul. It can be proved that he mounted his horse, rode home, and six hours afterward was walking about. It never seemed to occur to these country doctors to look for any other injury than the bruise on the head, when they found him as good as dead next morning. I hear, though, that people who passed his house at night would often hear shouting and carousing. Now, who did that shouting and carousing? Not the gentlemen in the county, certainly, nor anybody else that I can find out. This fits in with your account of his associating with deserters. I have always had a theory that he received an injury that killed him between the time he was seen alive and apparently well, and when he was found dying in his bed.”

“That is precisely what I think—and I have a witness, a ragged boy, hereabouts, whom I have tried to keep respectable, who heard a great noise as of men shouting and drinking at Hackett’s house the night of Hackett’s death. The boy was cold and hungry, and although he knew he would be driven away if caught—for Hackett was a hard-hearted villain—yet he sneaked up to the house and gazed through the half-drawn curtains at the men sitting around the table, fascinated as he says by the sight of fire and food. He heard Hackett singing and laughing, and he saw the faces, and—mark you,—knows the names of those low fellows, who have never been suspected, and who have kept so remarkably quiet. Then, here is the point—one of the very men who deserted from my company, and was very thick afterward with Hackett, suddenly disappeared, and within a month died of injuries he could give no account of. You may depend upon it they had a fight, and it was my former companion in arms that killed the worthy Hackett—not poor Bob Henry’s blow.”

Pembroke’s dark eyes shone.

“We’ll keep this to ourselves, and make the fellow hold his tongue. We won’t give the deserters a chance to concoct a plausible lie. They will be certain to be at the court house when the trial comes off, and when I put them in the witness box unprepared—you will see.”

They talked over the case a half an hour longer before Pembroke got up to go. Then he said: “Are you going to call at The Beeches? You must have known Eliza Koller before she left here.”

“Know her,” cried Cave, “yes, I know her. I hope she has improved in every other way as much as she has in looks. I saw her the other day. It seemed to me that her hair was not so violently yellow when she went away; however, I’ll be cautious,—I see you are badly singed. Little Olivia Berkeley wouldn’t do for my lord—”

Pembroke got up and flung off in a passion, pursued by Cave shouting:

“I’ll give long odds on the widow!”

CHAPTER V.

A few Sundays after that, Mr. Cole’s heart was gladdened by the sight of Madame Koller and the bundle of cloaks and mufflers she called her mamma, walking in church just as the morning service was beginning. The little clergyman felt inspired. He fancied himself like Paul before the Athenians. Olivia Berkeley was there too, and the Colonel, who settled himself in his pew to catch Mr. Cole in a false syllogism or a misquotation—anything to chaff the reverend gentleman about during the coming week. Mr. Cole did his best. He laid aside his manuscript and indulged in an extempore address that warmed the orator, if not the congregation, with something like eloquence. The Hibbses were there too—a florid, well-dressed family, Mr. Hibbs making the responses in a basso so much louder than Mr. Cole’s mild treble that it seemed as if Mr. Hibbs were the parson and Mr. Cole the clerk.

“I tell you what it is my dear,” Colonel Berkeley had said angrily to his daughter half an hour before when the Hibbses swept past them up the flagged walk through the churchyard, “the religion of these infernal Hibbs people is what disgusts me most. They made their money in the war of 1812. Up to then they were shouting Methodists—I’ve heard my father swear it a hundred times—” The Colonel belonged to a class, not uncommon in Virginia, who regarded the Episcopal Church as a close corporation, and resented with great pugnacity any attempt to enter it on the part of the great unwashed. It was the vehicle chosen by the first families to go to heaven in, and marked “Reserved.” Hence the Colonel’s wrath. His church was a church founded by gentlemen, of gentlemen, and for gentlemen, and it was a great liberty for any other class to seek that aristocratic mode of salvation.

“Now, damme, the Hibbses are the greatest Episcopalians in the parish. I am as good a churchman as there is in the county, but begad, if I want such a set of vulgarians worshiping under the same roof and rubbing elbows with me when I go up to the Lord’s table. I think I gave that young Hibbs fellow a setback last communion Sunday which will prevent him from hustling up to the rail before his betters.”

By which it will be seen that Dashaway’s unlucky fiasco and the triumph of the long-legged roan at Campdown had not been obliterated from the Colonel’s memory. During the sermon, Colonel Berkeley only took his eyes off the clergyman once. This was when Mr. Hibbs came around with the collection plate. The object of that day’s collection was, as Mr. Cole had feelingly stated, for the conversion of the higher castes in India. Colonel Berkeley thrust both hands in his trousers’ pockets, and surveyed Mr. Hibbs defiantly as that worthy citizen poked the plate at him. This duello between Mr. Hibbs and Colonel Berkeley occurred every collection Sunday, to the edification of the congregation. After holding the plate before the Colonel for a considerable time, Mr. Hibbs moved off—a time that seemed interminable to Olivia, blushing furiously in the corner of the pew.

After church the congregation streamed out, and according to the country custom, the people stopped to talk in the churchyard. Colonel Berkeley marched up to Mr. Cole, and put something in his hand.

“There, Cole,” he remarked, “I wouldn’t put anything in the plate when that ruffian of a vestry-man of yours poked it under my nose. But I doubled my contribution, and I’ll thank you to put it with the rest.”

“Certainly, Colonel,” answered Mr. Cole—“but Christian charity—”

“Christian charity be hanged, sir. I’m a Christian and a churchman, but I prefer Christian gentlemen to Methodist upstarts. Whether I go to heaven or the other place either, damme, I propose to go in good company.”

“This will go to the missionary fund for India, Colonel.”

“Ha! ha! I’d like to see one of you callow young clergymen tackle a Brahmin in India. By Jove. It would be fun—for the Brahmin!”

Colonel Berkeley had no mind to let Mr. Cole monopolize Madame Koller, so just as the clergyman stood, hat in hand bowing to her and her mother, the Colonel marched up, and by a skillful maneuver shoveled the elder lady off on Mr. Cole, while he himself attended the younger one to the carriage. At the churchyard gate was Olivia Berkeley talking with Mrs. Peyton—and by her side stood French Pembroke. Madame Koller smiled charmingly at her old acquaintances. She was so sorry Miss Berkeley had not been at home the day she called. Miss Berkeley was politely regretful. It was so sunshiny and delightful that Madame Koller would like to walk as far as the main road led them toward home—it was only across a field or two then, for each of them to reach home. Olivia also assented to this. Madame Koller’s society was far from lacking charm to her—and besides, the attraction of repulsion is never stronger than between two women who cherish a smoldering spark of jealousy.

Madame Koller wanted the Colonel to come, and brought her whole battery of smiles and glances into action to compel him—but he got out of it with much astuteness. He was no walker, he said. Then she turned to French Pembroke.

“Good-bye, my dear,” said Mrs. Peyton to Olivia, sotto voce. “Don’t be left at the meeting of the ways.”

“No, I won’t, I promise you,” replied Olivia.

Off they started. Madame Koller moved with the grace of a fairy in a drawing-room, but on a country road, holding a sunshade in one hand and her gown in the other, it was a promenade rather than a walk. Olivia walked with the easy step of a girl country born and country bred, and albeit it was a little more than a saunter, she soon walked Madame Koller out of breath.

Pembroke had but little share in the conversation. Except a laughing reference to him occasionally, he was left out, and had full opportunity to compare the two women—which he did with an amused smile. Compliments were plenty from Madame Koller, which Olivia deftly parried or ignored. In a little while the turning was in sight where both left the high road, and a path in one direction led to Isleham, and in another, gave a short cut to The Beeches. Pembroke was beginning to apprehend an awkward predicament for himself as to which one of the ladies he should accompany, when Olivia cut the knot.

“Here I must leave you—good-bye, Madame Koller, I shall see you during the week—good-bye—” to Pembroke.

“There is Madame Koller’s carriage in sight,” remarked Pembroke, thinking that offered a solution of the problem—to which Olivia only responded pleasantly—“Good-bye—good-bye—” and tripped off.

Madame Koller looked rather foolish—she had been outgeneraled completely.

“There is your carriage,” again said Pembroke, this time looking straight at her.

“Yes. I know it. You will soon be rid of me.”

As she spoke her eyes filled with real tears of mortification. Pembroke was a man, and he could not see this, and be as hard as he meant to be. Nevertheless, he did not intend to walk through the field with Madame Koller.